Noninvasive in vivo imaging of oxygen metabolic rate in the retina

Precise and noninvasive measurement of retinal oxygen metabolic rate is important for retinal pathological investigations as well as retinal disease detection, which has not been achieved until recently. Here, we quantified retinal oxygen metabolic rate in rats by combining photoacoustic ophthalmoscopy with spectral domain-optical coherence tomography. We employed multi-wavelength photoacoustic ophthalmoscopy for oxygen saturation measurement and applied dual-ring scanning Doppler spectral domain-optical coherence tomography to image retinal blood flow. With retinal oxygen saturation and blood flow being measured, we determined the retinal oxygen metabolic rate in a typical rat to be 373.41 ± 88.04 ng/minute.